


What Are the Odds?

by AngelWithAStory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Critical Role: Wildemount Campaign (Web Series)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Drabble, Getting to Know Each Other, Trans Beau, Trans Characters, past trauma, this literally came to me in a dream, trans caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelWithAStory/pseuds/AngelWithAStory
Summary: The humans had more in common than they first realise.





	What Are the Odds?

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno man, I've just kinda emo about these two shitty humans in a dnd game
> 
> this is also the first thing I've written for weeks and I wrote it all in one day so there you go
> 
> ....this really got away from me

Caleb was not born as Caleb Widogast. It had been so long that Caleb couldn’t even remember the name his parents had gifted him.

(That was a lie. Caleb remembered, _of course_ he did. He just didn’t care for it anymore. It didn’t mean anything anymore).

He was not born Caleb Widogast, but that didn’t stop him, either.

He still read every scrap of reading he could get his little hands on, whether a gift or a stolen trinket, it didn’t matter. It was the oddity that his parents could live with, and it was a hell of a lot safer to let Caleb curl up under a tree or beside the fireplace with a book than watch him constantly as he conjured sparks from his fingers or made glowing orbs of light appear out of nothing.

Out of books and magic, Caleb’s family were _definitely_ on the side of books.

It didn’t matter to Caleb: he was happy either way.

Caleb was usually happy, when he looked back on his childhood memories.

Life was hard, of course it was. He was raised by a poor farmer and a poor seamstress on the edge of a town that never wanted to remember they existed. But between childhood ignorance and Caleb’s brother (just two years his senior, but somehow infinitely more wise, somehow the only person that knew Caleb better than he knew himself), those memories of playing in the field beside their farm, or swinging from tree branches, or the rare days when the other children would play with them and their laughter would ring out throughout the valley.

Caleb remembered his first kiss with a poignant touch; he couldn’t have been older than twelve, sat on the higher branches of one of the trees with the tanner’s son, talking about everything and nothing like children always did, how he suddenly leaned in and kissed him, how he almost ripped his skirts when he clenched his hands.

Caleb remembered how he stayed up that night, a smile on his face and a blush on his cheeks. How he told the baker’s daughter the next day and how they had giggled and blushed together like little girls had a tendency to do.

That was a memory Caleb didn’t like remembering. Yes, it was sweet. But the ash that night the village burned tasted bitter on Caleb’s tongue.

 _That night_ was one that Caleb wished he could burn from his memory.

Fifteen years old, almost old enough to be wed, to be called a woman, to crawl towards freedom. All of it destroyed in one night.

The night when the men of the Empire stormed his small, peaceful village. The night when all sounds were drowned out by screams. The night Caleb watched his father’s farm go up in flames, when his mother screamed for them to run, when his brother pushed him into the foliage so the soldiers wouldn’t find them. When the soldiers chased after his brother’s distraction and Caleb was left alone in the forest.

Caleb wandered after that.

Alone. Desperate. Afraid.

 _Alive_.

It took a day or two for it to hit, but Caleb was still _alive_.

He remembered sitting on a river bed, shivering in his brother’s coat that he had bundled him up in before they had escaped into the forest. Before they had lost each other. The coat still smelt vaguely like home and Caleb clung to that. Clung to every memory stitched into the ratty old coat of his brother, only a few months from being a man.

That coat encompassed everything Caleb knew. Everything that Caleb still had in the world.

So he took it and started walking.

The more he travelled, the more he realised he knew very little about the world. The world was no place for an adolescent girl on her own, but an adolescent boy could be forgiven. Overlooked. _Forgotten_.

Caleb was smart.

So Caleb adapted.

He cut his hair, he stole a new set of clothes, he bound his chest, he deepened his voice and trained himself not to speak unless he needed to.

It was easy to borrow his brother’s and his father’s name. It was easy to slip into this persona, this _idea_ of who Caleb could be. _Should_ be.

Caleb was very clever, even in his naive years.

It didn’t take long for Caleb to realise this persona was who he was meant to be. That it felt... _right_.

***

Beauregard knew from a very young age that she was not the son her parent’s wanted.

She wasn’t their son at all.

It didn’t help that she wasn’t exactly the _daughter_ they wanted either. Yes, she was their daughter, but she still got into scraps and came home with bloodied knees and mud and bruises littering her body. She never got the appeal of boys, but she _definitely_ got the appeal of girls, and that also added a few grey hairs to her father’s receding hairline.

Even when she grew her hair out, even when she let her mother brush makeup onto her skin and tie her hair up out of her face, her parents weren’t happy.

By the time she reached sixteen, Beauregard was pretty sure her parents would never be happy with her.

So she stopped caring.

Three nights before Beauregard’s sixteenth birthday, she stood in her bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror. She stared for a _long_ , long while.

Her father’s jawline.

Her mother’s eyebrows, plucked the way her mother drew her’s on every morning.

Her father’s nose.

Her mother’s mouth.

Her father’s eyes.

The only thing that felt her own was her hair; too dark to be her mother’s hair, too thick to be her fathers.

It was _hers_. Her hair was _hers_.

Carefully, Beauregard grabbed the ornate-looking brush her mother insisted on brushing her hair with. She didn’t look away from her reflection as Beauregard brushed through sections of her hair. Practiced movements ran her fingers to sooth the static.

Beauregard let her hair fall down and frame her face.

This had been her face for _sixteen years_. For sixteen years, Beauregard had looked in the mirror and seen this face look back at her.

All at once...Beauregard _hated_ it.

She hated this face that looked back at her. This merger of her shithead father and disapproving mother.

It wasn’t acceptable anymore.

She wanted to be something _different_ , something _more_.

Carefully, Beauregard ran her thumbs from the sides of her temple, through her hair, until they met on the crown of her head. She separated the two sections of hair, smoothing down the flyaways.

Her heart was starting to pick up its pace inside her ribs. An ornate, claw-like grip was perched beside the basin she stood in front of. Beauregard clamped down the top section of her hair.

She spent another moment looking at herself in the mirror. The hair that wasn’t pinned up looked strange now by both the light of the lantern she had lit in her bathroom and the moonlight that streamed through the window.

Her chest, her head, her limbs felt heavy as she gathered the loose hair in one hand and picked up the scissors in the other.

“No going back now.” Beauregard said to the girl in the mirror. It didn’t feel like a warning. It felt like a promise.

Beauregard would never forget the ache of sheer _relief_ and that first breath after the scissors closed. How the hair in her grip fell limp and the short strands brushed against the tips of her ears.

It felt cathartic.

It felt better than any sloppy make out session down a dark alley with the prettiest girl she could find that night.

This feeling was amazing, _addictive_.

She wasted no time in hacking away at the hair. Letting it fall down her shoulders, brushing it off the nape of her neck, trying to get as close to the scalp as she could with just a pair of sewing scissors she had stolen from her mother’s office.

Beauregard let the hand holding the scissors fall to her side. She was staring at the mirror. Her heart was beating fast in her chest.

The girl in the mirror was different.

She wasn’t just an uneasy combination of her mother’s prejudice and her father’s greed.

Beauregard looked in the mirror and she saw the woman that she wanted to be. That she was going to claw her way towards.

There was a goal now. Something to live for. Something to _strive_ for.

Beauregard was tough, she knew that by now. That was the fact she built herself around.

Beauregard was strong enough to escape, to survive this _bullshit_ her parents were trying to put her through.

She would survive.

That much was guaranteed.

***

The bar was livelier than they had expected. A lot of people drinking, laughing, playing card games and just _living_.

It was enough of an excuse for the rest of them to join in, as well.

It was enough for Jester and Nott to join in with a game of cards on the other side of the tavern, enough for Fjord and Molly to joyously buy another round for the table (and maybe a few new friends Molly had made chatting with random patrons at the bar).

And that left Beau and Caleb sat at a little booth together in the corner of the tavern, their backs against the wall. Watching.

To say it was uncomfortable would be putting it mildly. To say it was unbearable to sit in silence while Caleb read and Beau people-watched would be being overly dramatic.

And to be fair, it stopped any awkward small talk. That was _all_ Beau could ask for, really.

Until an annoying little voice in the back of her head piped up again.

Beau frowned, to herself. She _hated_ it when that annoying voice started talking in the back of her head. It sounded so much like Mollymauk it was unbearable.

“Hey,” Beau said, nudging Caleb hard enough to almost knock the book off the table, “ _hey_ ,”

Caleb looked up with a quick blink, followed by a slow blink. It was always just a little unnerving how much he resembled Frumpkin when he was relaxed. Maybe familiar’s were called that for a reason…

Beau shook that train of thought away.

 _Not_ the time.

“ _Ja?_ ” Caleb asked, his accent thicker now he had a drink or two in him.

“Do you think we have anything in common?” Beau asked, tilting her glass a little as she gestured. Okay, maybe they were all a few drinks in and _maybe_ this had been weighing on her _just_ a little.

So maybe this was the perfect time to talk.

“I don’t understand?” Caleb said, somehow making it a statement that could end the conversation if she let it.

“I just mean,” Beau said, quickly thinking up what she ‘ _just meant_ ’, “you know, we’re both Empire kids. We’re the only humans in the group. I don’t know, I just think maybe there’s more than that.”

Caleb closed the book he was reading and leaned one arm on it. There was something calculating on his face and Beau resisted every instinct to squirm. She _hated_ being analysed.

“Why are you asking this now?” Caleb asked. He waited patiently for Beau to get over whatever hang up was tying her tongue.

“Molly said something to me the other day.” Beau said slowly. At least they both had ‘ _reluctant to talk about self_ ’ as a shared issue. “And it’s stuck with me.”

“What did he say?” Caleb was interested now. Just a flicker of it.

“He just said something about how similar we were. And then he laughed when I told him I didn’t see it.” Beau hated to admit it. She _really_ hated admitting defeat.

“So you want to get to know each other to either prove Tealeaf right or to prove him wrong.” It wasn’t a question but Beau liked to think she realised it was a choice.

“You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to.” Beau said. “I know a thing or two about rough childhoods, I won’t pry.”

“My childhood wasn’t particularly rough.” Caleb said. That small admission surprised both of them, just a little. “I had a poor upbringing, but I was cared for.”

“So what happened to them?” Beau asked, taking another drink. “How’d you end up with Nott? Disagreement?”

“Death.” Caleb’s voice did break, but they both pretended it didn’t. Right now, the rules between them were clear: no judgement, no pity, no repeating what you heard. “A fire. My parents burned, my brother was captured by the Empire soldiers.”

“ _That explains the mines_.” Beau muttered into her glass. She put his mostly-full glass in front of Caleb. An open invitation. “You never mentioned a brother.”

“It never came up.” Caleb said. “I imagine you were an only child.”

“What gave it away? My lack of social skills?” Beau teased.

“How quickly you bonded with Jester.” Caleb said.

“You really do know how to manipulate people, don’t you?” It wasn’t an insult, Beau wasn’t hypocritical enough for that.

“I had to learn.” Caleb said. He picked up his glass and took a long drink. “Can I ask a personal question?”

“Shit, we haven’t already been doing that?” Beau said, resting her elbow on the table. Some part of her brain wondered if they should grab a bottle of hardcore whiskey before they went any deeper.

“Was Beauregard always your name?” Caleb asked, also wondering about the whiskey, as he glanced towards the two of their group sat at the bar.

“Yep. My parents couldn’t pry that name from me, even though they tried. Was Caleb always yours?” Beau said.

“No. Forgive me if I don’t tell you what it was.”

“I never asked that.” Beau promised. “Well, so far we’re zero-for-three. Let’s see what else we dreg up tonight.”

“Four.” Caleb corrected.

“Four?”

“Upbringing, family status, siblings, name.” Caleb said, counting them off as he spoke. "The only thing we have in common is a transition." 

“So that's what? One in five? Let’s try for two in six,” Beau said, thinking for a moment, “ever been convicted?”

“Once, yes.” Caleb said. “Have you?”

“Three times. Twice for drunk and disorderly, once for assault.” Beau tried to judge Caleb’s expression. “I’m guessing yours was a con job gone wrong.”

Caleb only nodded.

“Two in six, let’s keep the odds going.” Beau said, chasing her words with another drink.

“Do you like Yasha?” Caleb asked suddenly.

Beau almost choked on her beer. She coughed as Caleb awkwardly patted her back. The movement didn’t come naturally to him and it showed. Still, Beau appreciated it.

“I mean-”

“You just seem to compliment her a lot whenever she’s around. I wondered if there were any feelings behind those words.” Caleb asked. It was an innocent question, just an unexpected one.

“I mean, I _guess_. It’s just a crush. She doesn’t like me though, so nothing’s going to happen.” Beau admitted. She seemed a little sad, and Caleb wondered how someone as bold as her couldn't see how Yasha looked at her in the midst of a battle. 

“Then, I’m afraid we are three-for-seven.” Caleb took a _long_ drink, long enough to finish it.

“No shit,” Beau said, sounding more impressed than anything. “Who’s the hopeless crush?”

“I’m surprised you can’t guess.” Caleb said.

“Well I _thought_ it was Fjord but then suddenly Molly took an interest in you, so it’s between Molly and Fjord, but I’m leaning towards Fjord because Molly’s an asshole.”

“He’s only an asshole to you.” Caleb pointed out. He smiled a little when Beau groaned loudly.

“ _Please_ , just tell me it’s not Molly so I can sleep easy at night.” Beau half-pleaded.

“Don’t worry Beauregard. You can sleep easy at night.” Caleb said, trying to hide the faint blush across his cheeks.

“So it _is_ Fjord!” Beau beamed as Caleb hurredly shushed her, looking up nervously at the bar. “Is this your first crush on a man? Is that why you’re being so weird about it?”

“No, just the first crush in a long, long time.” Caleb said.

“Is that how you swing?” Beau asked, tilting her head a little. She’d had her suspicions, but a little confirmation never hurt. At the sight of Caleb’s expression, Beau just reached over and gently clinked their empty glasses together. “Four-for-eight.”

“What’s four-to-eight?” Molly asked, putting down a new round of drinks on the table.

Beau was so glad for Caleb’s quick mind when he pointed over towards the other side of the tavern to where Jester was in a game of cards with a few random strangers.

“Four-to-eight odds that Nott earns more gold than Jester from that card game.” Caleb said, leaving no room for suspicion in his movements. He took the drink that Fjord offered him, pointedly ignoring Beau as Fjord sat next to him and leaned in very slightly. Unconsciously.

“I’ll take that bet.” Fjord said, sipping at from his glass. He leaned back on the bench and stretched an arm along the back of it. It just so happened that the arm was also behind Caleb’s back.

Now Caleb _really_ avoided Beau’s eye.

“I’m always up for a little friendly betting between friends.” Molly said.

“Well that’s something we all have in common.” Beau said grandly, but Caleb didn’t miss the little wink she threw his way.

Five-to-nine.

Those were some good odds of this working out okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [queenmoggy](http://queenmoggy.tumblr.com/) on tumblr and I'm super gay for Beauregard
> 
>  
> 
> ~~can you tell how much that hair scene means to me?~~


End file.
